Why ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough: the quest for excellence in schools SSAT Celebratory Dinner March 2009 Dylan Wiliam www.dylanwiliam.net
Dec 13, 2015
Why ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough: the quest for excellence in schools
SSAT Celebratory DinnerMarch 2009
Dylan Wiliam
www.dylanwiliam.net
Raising achievement mattersFor individuals Increased lifetime salary Improved healthLonger life
For societyLower criminal justice costsLower health-care costs Increased economic growth
Why are employers unhappy?Children are more intelligent than they have ever beenThe ‘Flynn’ effect: long-term rises in IQ
Teaching is better than it has ever beenEspecially in state schools (according to PISA data)
It’s the changing nature of work…Which of the following categories of skill is disappearing from the work-place most rapidly?
1. Routine manual
2. Non-routine manual
3. Routine cognitive
4. Complex communication
5. Expert thinking/problem-solving
…produces greater rewards for skill.
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1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005
Dropout
HS Diploma
Some College
BA/BSc
Prof Degree
Successful education…The test of successful education is not the amount of knowledge that a pupil takes away from school, but his appetite to know and his capacity to learn. If the school sends out children with the desire for knowledge and some idea how to acquire it, it will have done its work. Too many leave school with the appetite killed and the mind loaded with undigested lumps of information. The good schoolmaster is known by the number of valuable subjects which he declines to teach.
(Sir Richard Livingstone, 1941)
The only 21st century skillSo the model that says learn while you’re at school, while you’re young, the skills that you will apply during your lifetime is no longer tenable. The skills that you can learn when you’re at school will not be applicable. They will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for one skill. The one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school. We need to produce people who know how to act when they’re faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared.
(Papert, 1998)
Where’s the solution?Structure
Small secondary schools Larger secondary schools
Alignment Curriculum reform Textbook replacement
Governance Specialist schools Academies
Technology Computers Interactive white-boards
School effectivenessThree generations of school effectiveness researchRaw results approaches
Different schools get different results Conclusion: Schools make a difference
Demographic-based approaches Demographic factors account for most of the variation Conclusion: Schools don’t make a difference
Value-added approaches School-level differences in value-added are relatively small Classroom-level differences in value-added are large Conclusion: An effective school is a school full of effective classrooms
Increasing teacher qualityA labor force issue with 2 (non-exclusive) solutionsReplace existing teachers with better ones?
Important, but very slow, and of limited impact Teach First Gradually raising the bar for entry to teaching
Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers The “love the one you’re with” strategy It can be done
Provided we focus rigorously on the things that matter Even when they’re hard to do
Senning Transitional Switch
Early death rateSenning 12%Transitional 25% Bull, et al (2000). BMJ, 320, 1168-1173.
Improvements in pediatric cardiac surgery
“Always make new mistakes”Esther Dyson
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”Samuel Beckett� Worstward Ho
“In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and highest responsibility anyone could have.”
Lee Iacocca